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Local Elections (Ordinary Day of Elections in 2009) Order 2008

My Lords, I thank the Minister for delivering the order to the House in person and taking a little time off from her day job on the Planning Bill, but perhaps this is light relief. Certainly, the number of noble Lords present and the nature of this event make it seem very different from our discussions on the European elections five years ago when we dealt with the Bill which led to the all-postal vote elections mentioned by the noble Earl. Those were highly controversial and the Bill ping-ponged vigorously between the two Houses. Indeed, I think that the number of times it ping-ponged remained a record for several years. The Government have seen sense over that and are to be congratulated on doing so. It is a pity that they did not see sense before the event, but never mind, sense afterwards is better than no sense at all. The Liberal Democrats do not oppose the order; we would have brought along more troops had we intended to do so. However, I am a little less enthusiastic about the principle of it than was my honourable friend Andrew Stunell in the House of Commons Delegated Legislation Committee. The noble Earl said that the Government might be doing this because they did not want a hit of bad news. I do not know what will happen in next year’s elections. However, being the kind of freak who follows local council by-elections every week, I do know that in the couple of months since the party conferences, the party which has lost most local council by-elections is the Conservative Party. Something is happening down in the undergrowth which is a bit different from what has been happening in the past 12 months or two years. Who knows whether it will continue, but I advise the Tories not to be too gung-ho about their likely performance in the elections next May. However, the position may, of course, be as they say, and if it is, the Government will get two hits of bad news. It is a question of whether they are a month apart or three days apart, because the European elections are counted three days after the local elections. However, the principle of the order worries me a little. I am very wary of what I call the Government’s messing about with electoral processes. We discussed that on the previous elections Bill, which became an Act that allowed the Government to do that. I understand and accept that they have gone through all the processes of consultation which Parliament pressured them to write into the legislation. Nevertheless, all Governments have to be very careful indeed about messing about with electoral systems administratively or through delegated legislation. If every five years the local elections are to take place on the same day as the European elections, which now seems to be the pattern, that should be put in the legislation so that we all know it will happen and it cannot be manipulated by any Government for party political reasons. In principle I am in favour of separate elections for each kind of body on separate dates because that allows the public debate and the campaigns for those elections to focus on the issues that relate to those particular bodies. There is a temptation to say that local government elections are not as important as all the rest and that we can just bundle them in with something else. That devalues local government. Given the events taking place across the Atlantic today, 4 November, this is probably not the best time to argue this case given that the American electors, who apparently, will join huge queues—or lines, as they call them over there—will vote for umpteen different offices on the same day and on the same paper. However, our culture is different and I think that local elections ought to be kept separate as much as possible. Having said that, I agree that there are some good practical reasons for combining them, particularly given the closeness of the elections and the overlap of the timetable, which I have no doubt would cause confusion and would certainly cause extra administration for local authorities and returning officers. I should declare an interest as I sincerely hope that I will not be a candidate in any elections that may take place in the spring, but my name will probably appear on leaflets as an agent for Liberal Democrat candidates in my area. From a practical point of view, the prospect of holding election campaigns in the warmer days and lighter nights of May, as opposed to at the end of March and April, is very welcome. Given that general elections are now often held in June, the Government ought to think very seriously indeed that the answer to all this may well be to move the ordinary day of local elections from May to June. I put that forward as a way of avoiding all the difficulties and problems which seem to come up year after year. The Government have made much of the turnout in 2004. There is no doubt that the turnout at the 2004 European elections was considerably higher than it had been prior to that. The Government say that the figure was 42 per cent as opposed to 30 per cent, or something like that. I have refreshed my memory by reading some Electoral Commission papers that were published after that event. There is no doubt that the turnout in the European elections went up overall by about 10 or 15 per cent. However, it is absolutely clear that there were three reasons for that and only one of them was due to having the local elections on the same day. One reason was the all-postal vote pilots that took place in the north of England and the east Midlands, which, by and large, seemed to have put the turnout up by 5 per cent or more in those areas, perhaps a bit more. About a third of the increase in those areas was attributed to that. Another third of the increase in the areas that had local elections seemed to be due to the two elections being together, but underlying it all there was a general increase in turnout for those European elections. Of the overall increase in the turnout, about a third was an underlying increase in turnout for the European elections, about a third seemed to be associated with having them on the same day as the local elections in some areas, and about a third seemed to be associated with having all-postal vote pilots in the areas that had them. The Government are overegging the pudding in claiming that the increase was all due to having them on the same day, not least because somewhere like Scotland did not have local elections. I shall consider one or two of the details of the order. Despite what I have said about having elections on separate days, having the parish elections on the same day is very sensible. The way in which the basic legislation says that in those circumstances the parish elections should be put off for three weeks is crackers. With the best will in the world, most of those the last time that happened had very low turnout. That is sensible and, again, I hope that will be integrated into future legislation. Article 5 on the six-month rule for casual vacancies being made seven months is wrong. There is no doubt that there is no need for that to happen. It is not clear why the Government are doing it. The noble Earl suggested that it was to avoid by-elections; I think that it is just for convenience. I do not understand why it is happening, particularly as many of the authorities are county councils with large electoral divisions that have only one councillor. The Government are always going on nowadays about the importance of what they call front-line councillors and the way in which they are getting engaged with the community. Representing the community is a major part of being a councillor. There is no reason for an area not to have a councillor, in a single-member ward, in a big area, for seven months. It could have been slipped forward a month with the rest, and it ought to have been. That is one of the main faults of the order. Article 7 on moving the administration of the European elections to the local authority area is very sensible. I understand that the forthcoming Political Parties and Elections Bill will make that the norm in general. That is very sensible, and the Government are to be congratulated on that. The extension of what I call the limbo period, when the new unitary authorities will be under the control of implementation executives or shadow executives rather than a proper, elected council, is regrettable. It is not particularly a direct consequence of this order, but—I am trying to think of polite words to use about the way in which the Government have gone about setting up the new unitary authorities—it has not been as competently or as efficiently done as many of us would have liked. As a result, because it has not been properly thought out, these problems are occurring. One hopes that there will not be serious problems as a result, but it is fairly clear that there could be, and if there are problems it will be entirely the Government’s fault. I want to say one or two things about Cornwall. Most of the questions about Cornwall were winkled out in the Commons Committee by my honourable friends Andrew Stunell and Dan Rogerson, the Member of Parliament for North Cornwall. The Minister has already confirmed tonight that the Government expect to have the Cornish elections at the end of October. All I can say is that the sooner that the order to change the Cornish election date comes to Parliament the better. Again, it is a shambolic situation when people do not know, even if they think they know, when the elections are going to be. Will any parish council elections that are due to take place this next year in Cornwall still go ahead on the day of the European elections? Specifically, I understand that new parishes are being set up in the district of Restormel. Can we expect them to go ahead? I understand that it is the wish locally that they should get on and set up the new parishes now that it has all been agreed. The noble Earl referred to the confusion about different ballot papers. I do not think that there is much confusion in most places, because people are used to having a ballot paper for the district and a ballot paper for the parish, or a ballot paper for the general election and a ballot paper for the local election. They cope with that very well. The one place where people do still seem to have confusion is in mayoral elections, where there is the rather extraordinary electoral system called the supplementary vote, which is used for mayoral elections and which, as noble Lords who have heard me talk about this before will know, I think is an appalling system that should be changed. Nevertheless, the way in which that happens, with people having to put two ‘X’s in two different columns is very confusing and leads to a lot of wasted votes that are not transferred across. The more that people can be given clear explanations of how that works the better. I thank the Minister for coming to the House to present the order. We will wave it on its way, with a few criticisms.